Amsterdam – Biggest day ever!

We landed in Amsterdam at 7:30pm local time. We’re now 8 hours behind Australia. Before leaving the plane we immediately put on our jumpers, knowing it would be pretty cold. That did not prepare us well for the actual cold that was about to hit us.

We got off the plane and made our way to the baggage claim. While waiting for our bags we saw a video on screens above showing the types of things you would have to declare to customs. Thankfully we didn’t have any snakes in our luggage and the customs lady explained that you only need to declare stuff outside of the EU so the wine we bought in Santorini didn’t need to be declared.

Getting from the airport to our hotel was possibly one of the most frustrating moments of our honeymoon. We quickly realised that everything is in Dutch and very little English is written down on signs. This is in contrast to Greece where translations are provided for everything including verbal announcements. To be safe we bought a 3-day ticket for both of us and used Google Maps with the free wifi. Unfortunately I didn’t realise that the Google Maps app doesn’t refresh the train information. So I was directing us on trains that had already left the station. This resulted us in missing the train that we thought we were meant to take, mainly because the train was a lot smaller than the platform we were on. Some trains are only 2-3 carriages long while the platforms go on for what feels like kilometres. While we were waiting patiently for our train, it was stopped behind us by about 100 metres. It wasn’t until it rushed passed us that we realised we missed it.

In a panic we took the next train that was on the other platform. This was not a smart move. Once on the train we realised it wasn’t going to go to the station that we needed. We got off at the Bijlmer ArenA train station and attempted to correct our mistake. This took a little while as we tried to understand how the Amsterdam train network works. There’s quite a few differences between it and the QR network (there’s a standard network, metro network, rail line numbers instead of destinations, and sprinters instead of ‘express’ lines). Eventually we made our way to the correct train station Overamstel and walked to our hotel. The walk was only around 800 metres but it was freezing cold (somewhere around 3 degrees).

When we reached the hotel we checked in where I happened to mention that it was our honeymoon. Pro-tip: mentioning it’s your honeymoon gets you bonus stuff. For us we got an upgrade to the top floor in a deluxe room. We were grateful but we had our eyes set on a hot shower to defrost.

The next morning we made our way downstairs to have our buffet breakfast from the hotel and planned the next few days. While having breakfast we picked up that the staff at the hotel were quite nice, while the tourists were quite rude. It was later in the day that we’d come to realise that most of the locals are nice, but the tourists have a lot to improve upon (things like general manners and responses, not interrupting someone speak or from someone doing their job, etc.)

We took the train to Centraal station in the heart of Amsterdam. As soon as we exited the station and onto the street we were amazed by the amount of people, the beautiful old buildings, and the layout of the area. Countless trams moved in front of us while people weaved in between by foot or with bicycles. Just in front of us were the canals where boats were moving in and out for tours.

We walked around without a direct plan of where to go. We wanted to explore the streets without a guide so that we didn’t miss anything. We ended up discovering the Body Worlds Exhibition. This is a display of plasticised human bodies made by Gunther von Hagens. The bodies are donated by the deceased and displayed in various ways to help explain the human body to people like us. We decided that we would do this later in our trip. The exhibition that is – we weren’t going to donate our bodies at the end of the trip.

We continued our journey around the streets of Amsterdam with the new goal of finding jackets for us to wear (it was getting pretty cold!). We saw that at the end of the street there was a carnival. The carnival was fairly small but they’d packed in a Ferris wheel, giant drop, a slingshot, and a 30 metre high carousel. At this moment I was just amazed at how much was going on, not just at the carnival, but in all the streets of Amsterdam. There were people on their hens and bucks weekends running around with fake boobs and penises on their own body parts, horse and carriages, and a man who was riding a giant accordion that also danced with little characters on it. I was so amazed I didn’t think to get a picture.

We moved from shop to shop along the different streets, taking in the sights, the sounds, and the smells. Eventually we were able to find matching jackets that were warm enough to withstand the Amsterdam chill. We decided to stop for some lunch and stopped by a place that looked okay. We were unsure of whether to order there until Chantal spotted a cat sitting on one of the chairs inside. This sold us on eating there as we’d get the chance to sit next to the cat. Unfortunately the cat moved when we were ordering but we still go to pat it afterwards. It looked like it was a resident cat of the restaurant.

Moving on, we continued our window shopping. After walking out of one of the shops we noticed a fire truck screaming past us and Chantal noticed that there was smoke coming from the block next to us. We walked over to see what was going on and found that one of the building was on fire. We recorded some of the fire on our phones and even witnessed an explosion as the fire progressed. The heat was quite intense (actually it felt quite nice because it was such a cold day). We left after about 10 minutes, as we weren’t sure whether the building housed dangerous goods. It was pretty exciting though and definitely something you can’t add to your itinerary.

Later in the night we booked tickets for the Body Worlds Exhibition and wandered in. We spent over 2 hours inside and only left after being kicked out. It was an amazing experience, with the only disappointing thing being that we didn’t go earlier in the day to spend even more time there. We not only learnt amazing things about the human body, we got to see some of it in intricate detail. If you don’t get queasy around the human body, we’d definitely recommend it if you have the chance.

We wrapped up the night with a nice meal and drinks before heading back to the hotel around midnight. It was a massive day for us walking around and we know that tomorrow will be a much slower day so that we can recover.

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